My feelings about Mac OS X are similar to the author's. I switched from a Windows XP/FreeBSD dual boot configuration to Mac OS X Tiger back in 2006 when I bought my first modern Mac, a Core Duo MacBook. I've remained a Mac OS X user from Tiger all the way to Mojave. Mac OS X in the 2000s to me was heads-and-shoulders better than the competition. It had a well-designed user interface, and most applications conformed to the Apple Human Interface Guidelines. It also provided me a Unix shell whenever I needed it. In my opinion Mac OS X peaked at Snow Leopard; in fact, I'd be comfortable using Snow Leopard (or even Tiger) as my daily driver today if it supported current hardware and if there were a modern web browser for it. It was a nice marriage of NeXT technology and an updated version of the venerable Macintosh user interface. It felt much more pleasant than Windows of the era (though I admit I liked Windows 7), and the desktop environments for Linux and the BSDs simply didn't compare.

Then came the Tim Cook era, and with it came the gradual locking down of the Mac, both in terms of hardware (for example, the soldering of formerly upgradable components such as RAM and storage) and software (for example, notarization). The user interface also gradually started adopting more iOS influences, which I think take away from the desktop experience. Due to my disappointment with Apple's direction (especially since roughly 2016), I opted not to upgrade my aging 2013 MacBook Air and 2013 Mac Pro with new Macs, instead switching to a Microsoft Surface Pro (running Windows 10) and a custom Ryzen 3900X build (which runs both Windows 10 and FreeBSD). I miss macOS, but I enjoy the openness of PCs, and I enjoy the flexibility of Windows and FreeBSD.

I am keeping an eye on two very interesting projects that attempt to replicate the spirit of early Mac OS X: helloSystem (https://hellosystem.github.io/docs/) and airyxOS (https://airyx.org/). Both projects are based on a FreeBSD foundation, but the major difference between the projects is airyxOS is a much more ambitious attempt to reimplement macOS's infrastructure (even going as far as to aim for supporting "trivial" Cocoa applications), while helloSystem has different (Qt) underpinnings, with an emphasis on replicating the Mac OS X look-and-feel and promoting adherence to the Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines. If these projects become successful, this will provide people who desire the early Mac OS X experience modern systems that will maintain that experience.